Category Physics

Jonathan G. Richens, John H. Selby, and Sabri W. Al-Safi. “Entanglement is Necessary for Emergent Classicality in All Physical Theories.” Physical Review Letters. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.080503

Is entanglement really necessary for describing the physical world, or is it possible to have some post-quantum theory without entanglement? In a new study, physicists have mathematically proved that any theory that has a classical limit-meaning that it can describe our observations of the classical world by recovering classical theory under certain conditions-must contain entanglement...

Phase-Defined van der Waals Schottky Junctions with Significantly Enhanced Thermoelectric Properties. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2017; 8 (13): 2887 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b01089

A new device being developed by Washington State University physicist Yi Gu could one day turn the heat generated by a wide array of electronics into a usable fuel source. The device is a multicomponent, multilayered composite material called a van der Waals Schottky diode. It converts heat into electricity up to 3X more efficiently than silicon – a semiconductor material widely used in the electronics industry. While still in an early stage of development, the new diode could eventually provide an extra source of power for everything from smartphones to automobiles.

“The ability of our diode to ...

Anti-skyrmions on a racetrack © MPI of Microstructure Physics

Scientists have discovered a new kind of magnetic nano-object in a novel material that could serve as a magnetic bit with cloaking properties to make a magnetic disk drive with no moving parts – a Racetrack Memory – a reality in the near future. Today’s world, rapidly changing because of “big data,” is encapsulated in trillions of tiny magnetic objects — magnetic bits – each of which stores one bit of data in magnetic disk drives.

Most digital data is stored in the cloud as magnetic bits within massive numbers of magnetic disk drives. Over the past several decades these magnetic bits have shrunk by many orders of magnitude, reaching limits where the boundaries of these magnetic regions can have special properties...

Scaffolds in a compound solar cell filled with perovskite after fracture testing. Credit: Dauskardt Lab/Stanford University

Packing tiny solar cells together, like micro-lenses in the compound eye of an insect, could pave the way to a new generation of advanced photovoltaics. In a new study, the Stanford team used the insect-inspired design to protect a fragile photovoltaic material, perovskite from deteriorating when exposed to heat, moisture or mechanical stress. The results are published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science (E&ES).

“Perovskites are promising, low-cost materials that convert sunlight to electricity as efficiently as conventional solar cells made of silicon,” said Reinhold Dauskardt, a professor of materials science and engineering and senior author of the study...